Sometimes people who work in a sales job actually miss an opportunity to sell because they aren’t listening to you and try and sell something you aren’t looking to buy.

 

Here’s an example.

 

The other day I went into American Golf (a golf retailer) looking to buy a Driver or at the least identify a Driver to buy as I’m looking to take up golf again. My conversation with the sales assistant (SA) went something like this:

 

Me: I’m looking to take up golf again and need to buy a driver…….. do you still sell the R9 driver?

SA: no we no longer hold that as it’s an old model.

Me: Oh OK.

SA: There’s loads of drivers over there for you to choose from.

Me: Oh, thank you (bearing in mind I was standing in a shop which sells golf clubs this piece of info didn’t really help!)

SA: Would you like to buy some golf insurance for £28?

 

At this point I thought – hang on I’ve come in saying that I’m in the market to buy a driver which could cost considerably more than £28 but you want to sell me insurance which isn’t going to make your company anywhere near the same amount of revenue?

 

Me: No thank you, not at the moment.

SA: But you get 3 rounds of golf thrown in with the price.

Me: That is good, but it’s still a no at this time. Thanks for your help (I was being polite).

 

I left the shop……….not having spent my money and he lost a sale.

 

So what went wrong?

 

Well quite simply he missed the major buying signal because he was too focused on selling me golf insurance because, I imagine there was a push on him promoting the insurance and he was on commission for selling it.

 

A good sales person would have perhaps advised me as follows:

 

‘we don’t have the R9 driver but there is a latest model R11 – would you like to try it?’ (interestingly I already knew this and would have been interested)

 

They may have followed up with:

 

‘Because it’s the latest model it does cost £xxx so if you didn’t want to spend that much we could have a look at these Drivers instead or alternatively if it was an option for you, you could consider buying a used driver whilst you get back into playing golf more regularly and then perhaps upgrade at a later date’… ‘How does that sound?’

 

That to me would have been good, simple but effective, customer service and far more likely to end in a sale.

 

Whats ironic about this is the insurance is probably a decent product and the 3 rounds of golf included in the price is very good and I’d probably be interested. However the key thing was timing….. why would I buy insurance when I don’t have golf clubs and therefore can’t play a round of golf yet?

 

Sell me the equipment I need to play golf and then sell me the add-ons.

 

No doubt you’ve all experienced somehing similar. Let me know if you have?